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I braved a winter storm a couple days ago and drove from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Bancroft, Michigan some 90 miles away to attend an Estate sale. It was near white out conditions in spots but I got there in one piece. And man, was I glad I did. The gentleman who had passed away was an avid rock hound and had a basement, garage and outbuilding full of various rocks, gems, glass, and machinery. I would have loved to have known that man as I’m sure he could have taught me a lot and had some great tales of adventure to share. I got some great deals and would have bought more but one guy in particular (probly some sort of ebay re-seller) picked up damn near everything he could get his mitts on. Luckily I was able to grab a few prizes for myself. The only bummer of the morning was I missed out on some huge Petoskey stones as I mistakenly believed they would take credit cards and had to run to the bank for some quick cash. Anyway, as always, I’ve included plenty of pictures of my purchases. I paid $124 for all the rocks and some small pieces of glass cullet. The rest of the glass in the pictures came from another source recently and I paid another $120 for those (including shipping). If you know what some of the proper names of the rocks are pictured below that I don’t have properly labeled feel free to comment or drop me a private message.

Stay tuned as I’ll be cutting these up soon and be making some spheres and things!

I always thought Thunder Eggs were beautiful. I hadn’t seen one in person until recently but I’ve loved looking at the pictures of cut pieces online over the years. I haven’t seen too many sphered as I imagine they look best sliced in half, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway. I bought a couple larger ones (about two pounds each) from Oregon. I don’t know a ton more about them than just that. I think they turned out pretty nice. They ended up looking like little planets to me. What do you think?

I also had a couple sand stones and an unfinished ugly conglomerate stone I had found on Lake Michigan. I decided to finish those and they are pictured also.